The return of Fawlty Towers? What a terrible idea

It is the comeback that nobody expected. Can we trust John Cleese to get it right again? Does anybody actually expect it to be any good?

It is the comeback that nobody expected. A new series of Fawlty Towers. After decades of being told that there would never be, could never be, more of it. Does anybody, beyond John Cleese, Camilla Cleese and their American producers, actually expect it to be any good?

I don’t want to be cynical. Fawlty Towers – or “the first two seasons of Fawlty Towers”, as its new director, Matthew George, refers to the 12 episodes that ran on BBC2 in 1975 and 1979 – is surely the greatest sitcom of all. Basil Fawlty raged at the uncouth, Americans, dim-witted Spanish waiters, his infuriating wife, recalcitrant Austin 1100 Countryman cars and the machinations of a universe seemingly set dead against him. He is one of the greatest comedy creations there has been. Cleese’s performance is much imitated, but has never been bettered, a masterpiece of repressed postwar rage, a masterclass in clowning. Each episode took Cleese and his co-writer, co-star and former wife Connie Booth six weeks to come up with. Labyrinthine, deeply satisfying plots. Exquisite supporting characters (played by actors who are, for the most part, dead or retired). Corking lines. Sublime set pieces.

Connie Booth with John Cleese in scene from Fawlty Towers.

I could go on. And which Fawlty Towers fan hasn’t, over the past 44 years, wished there could have been more of it? There were almost 80 hours of Friends, most of them at worst serviceable, at best glorious; Basil raged and capered and boobed for six hours in total. We want more!

Or we did. Every dog has its day, every sitcom has its sociopolitical context, every writer-performer (even the greats) has a finite time during which they can instinctively connect with the culture. I would love, love, love to believe that the Cleeses can come up with a way of reinventing Basil in his new boutique-hotel setting, butting heads (we imagine) with his daughter (played by Camilla, 39, who is also a co-writer) and with the censorious sensibilities of society today. In a way that isn’t just Basil raging against nonsenses about race and gender and online booking systems while his daughter goes, “Daadddd! More of this and I tell the warders at Jurassic Park where you’ve escaped to.”

Cleese’s performance is much imitated, but has never been bettered.

Basil 1.0 was a petit bourgeois man with ideas above his station, his interactions a function of the British class system, his outspokenness a liberation that, more often than not, proved a liability to himself. Cleese knew whereof he spoke. He was connecting with his upbringing, his education, Britain as it was then. His recent pronouncements against cancel culture, though, while certainly not all incorrect, come across as too broad, too removed, too sweeping to engage with society as it is now. And by “engaging” I don’t mean falling in line with it, but I do mean seeing it clearly and in detail. I’m not convinced that is Cleese any more.

In the best moments of his most recent live tour, Why There Is No Hope, Cleese suggested that most of us don’t really know what we are doing, himself included, that we will sacrifice anything in our quest to be seen to be right. A promising idea. He then, however, more or less went on to suggest that he alone was the man to cut through the crap, unlike the goons at the BBC, who doubted Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus before they went on to conquer the world.

Will Camilla or the producers be able to bring out the best of John Cleese, 83, to challenge as well as enable as part of their collaboration?

So he will take no notice of what critics, professional or amateur, think he should or shouldn’t do with his creation. And if you listen to his insightful, detailed commentary tracks on the Fawlty Towers DVDs you will indeed find that, given enough time and space with which to view his work, he is his own best critic.

Will Camilla or the producers be able to bring out the best of John Cleese, 83, to challenge as well as enable as part of their collaboration? Do I underestimate one of the great comic geniuses of the 20th century? I do so hope I do. I could do with a laugh. Prove me wrong, please, John. I will sacrifice my need to be right for the sake of the pleasure you might yet bring, but the third season of Fawlty Towers sounds like a terrible idea.

The Times